Video-game sales fell a shocking 25 percent in March, the fourth straight month that video game sales have been on the decline within the United States, according to reports.

Sales of video games dropped 25 percent to $553.1 million, according to NPD, as cited by game blogs and wire services. Hardware experienced the biggest dip, falling 35 percent compared to March 2011, according to USA Today.

NPD, as has been its wont for the past year or so, didn't release actual sales data for the individual consoles. But Microsoft, which has topped the sales charts within the U.S. for eight straight months, said it sold 371,000 consoles last month.

The top five games were: Mass Effect 3 (Electronic Arts), Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (Capcom), MLB 12: The Show (Sony Computer Entertainment), NBA 2K12 (2K Sports) and SSX 2012 (Electronic Arts). Those figures excluded sales of digitally downloaded games, including those for tablets and other devices.

Activision Blizzard's kids' game series Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure continued to be popular, NPD said. The game itself, released in October, was still the No. 15 title in March, as reported by the L.A. Times.

Mark Hachman Mark joined ExtremeTech in 2001 as the news editor, after rival CMP/United Media decided at the time that online news did not make sense in the new millennium.
Mark stumbled into his career after discovering that writing the great American novel did not pay a monthly salary, and that his other possible career choice, physics, required a degree of mathematical prowess that he sorely lacked.
Mark talked his way into a freelance assignment at CMP’s Electronic Buyers’ News, in 1995, where he wrote the...
More »